The determined Jim Ellis starts a swim team for troubled teens at the Philadelphia Department of Recreation.

Once a scholarship student with a great future, Joshua dreams of winning a BMX cycling championship as a means to finding a better life, but fate intervenes in the form of an accident that shatters his knee. He is given shelter and a job by Mambo who houses refugee teenagers from all over Africa. When Joshua meets Olivia, a talented young dancer of mixed race from a well-to-do family, it brings him into a world he has never known before. Her insights cast a shadow over Mambo's agenda and cause Joshua to rise above all odds and find a way to a brighter future.